Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish new content on a consistent basis to automatically drive web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of this process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin to post new content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are exploring any and every advantage they can that can help you improve their results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, you have an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going well in the widget assembly plant when everything comes to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and, without uttering a word, immediately walks to the main control box. After staring at the control unit for what seems like 3 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a tiny hammer from his tool box and makes a very gentle tap about 1 inch from the right-hand side of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line returns once again to normal.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request of payment for services rendered for the sum of $5,000.
Confused and bewildered, the factory manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site fully configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make complicated situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring some of the site settings for the client. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and/or online services.
Configuring External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external platforms into your traffic network, content linking back to your site will get automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media accounts, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmaster Tools, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, use this information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your website.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services section when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely immune from a cyber-attack.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social share plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Tags And Post Categories
Categories & post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they are greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post great content on a consistent basis to begin bringing new web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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